Fresno Bee Saturday, Aug. 28, 2010

By Andrew Fiala

Nearly 20% of Americans believe that President Obama is Muslim, according to a recent Pew research poll. A democratic country cannot afford this level of ignorance. As we get back to school, this is a stark reminder that we need more and better education.

Education must begin with the facts. With regard to an issue such as the president's religion, even casual observers have access to relevant information about the fact that Obama professes to be a Christian. Consider the massive floods in Pakistan and China or the giant icebergs floating away from Greenland: These are indisputable facts that are relevant to thinking about our changing climate.

But the problem is that many Americans appear to lack the basic knowledge that would allow them to locate Greenland or Pakistan on a map. In the same way, many appear to lack basic information about the world's religions and basic differences between Islam and Christianity. We need more and better education in basic subjects such as geography, history, and the sciences that help students grasp the facts.

Education should also provide the sort of critical-thinking skills that allow us to interpret the facts. It is not enough to know that glaciers are melting around the world. We also need to know whether this is a long-term trend or a short-term change, whether the cause is human-generated or a natural fluctuation. To make this sort of judgment, even more scientific knowledge is needed.

In the same way, we have to interpret what it means to say that Obama is a Christian. To claim that someone is a Christian is merely to vaguely gesture in a certain direction. Christianity can include a variety of faiths from Mormonism to Catholicism. The same point can be made, by the way, with regard to Islam. The Muslims who want to construct a mosque in lower Manhattan are simply not the same as those who were inspired by Osama bin Laden to attack Manhattan on Sept. 11.

To begin to interpret political and religious facts, we need to know something about history, society, and the psychological tendency to oversimplify complex things. And we need to understand how to separate good arguments from bad ones.Here is where the study of literature, the social sciences and philosophy are useful. It is important to examine a variety of different ideas, to understand how ideas gain power, and to learn to judge the difference between good arguments and bad ones.

Finally, education should lead us to see that intelligent people are entitled to disagree with one another. Our opinions about facts and their interpretation will vary. The best we can do is try to stay true to the facts and sincerely attempt to find the best interpretation of things. But we also have to admit that the world is complex and our values differ.  For some, Christianity provides a compelling idea about the truth of ultimate reality. But there are other compelling religious ideas. And Christians themselves disagree with one another.

So long as we respect each other in terms of our right to find the truth for ourselves, we can get along. From this perspective it doesn't matter whether Obama is a Muslim, a Christian, or an atheist. If he is tolerant and respectful of the faith of others, that is enough.

No one is born wise or virtuous. Virtue and wisdom are developed through education. It is clear that we need more and better education today -- to combat a growing threat of ignorance and intolerance.  A better educated citizenry will benefit us all, since in a democracy we are each dependent upon the wisdom and virtue of our fellow citizens.